


Anastatica

by alientongue



Series: Resurrection Plant [2]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters: Sword & Shield | Pokemon Sword & Shield Versions
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Friendship, Gen, Ghost Physics, Ghosts, Possessing One's Own Body, Slice of Life, Team Bonding, still only one ghost, there is a slight misunderstanding over ghost vessel safekeeping methods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:14:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22104637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alientongue/pseuds/alientongue
Summary: “Oops,” Allister mumbles, bowing his head as the translucent arm lowers to rejoin its double. The combined two stretch, flex their fingers, evidently recalibrating. “Still kinda hard to guess where everything goes when I’m not there…”Opal takes another long sip of her tea. Fortunately, it’s still hot. “Dear. Are you a ghost?”Allister gets used to things and makes friends.
Series: Resurrection Plant [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1595251
Comments: 7
Kudos: 147





	Anastatica

**Author's Note:**

> many thanks to [calculatingMinutiae](/users/calculatingMinutiae/) for the beta!

“‘nk you,” Allister mumbles, plunking a couple of sugar cubes into his tea. “For having me over.”

Primly, Opal tips the milk to drip just a few drops into her own cup, then stirs it with a fingernail. “Oh, no need to thank me, dear. It’s always a pleasure.” She touches the point of her nail to her napkin, lets the film of tea leach into the fabric. Blots off any lingering moisture before folding her hands under her chin and peering across the table. “A rare one, at that. What could be so urgent as to lure you out of Stow-on-Side?”

Allister stares into the tablecloth, fidgeting with the hem of one drooping sleeve. He plinks a couple more sugar cubes into his cup.

Opal hands him a spoon. “Stir, dear,” she reminds. “If you don’t, it will all crust at the bottom. Unpleasant to drink and worse to clean.”

The noise that comes from behind his mask could be _sorry_ or _thank you_ or _okay_ for as quietly inarticulate as it is, but given that he does start stirring, spoon held gingerly between a thumb and forefinger, the distinction is trivial. The room is quiet, for a minute, save for the muted trills of Swirlix drifting on the wind outside and the chiming _clink_ of well-polished silver on china. Then Allister stops, rests the spoon on the rim of his cup, and says, “I need your help.”

Humming acknowledgement, Opal lifts her teacup to her lips for a taste. The liquid is scaldingly, refreshingly hot, and she takes a long sip before setting it down again. “So you do.” She arches one eyebrow. “Well, out with it. I can’t very well help a problem I don’t know.”

He takes a breath deep enough to make his chest shudder as it deflates. “It’s,” he starts. Stops. “I’m…” Stops again. He shakes his head, the noise in his throat dying this time before it can shape any words. Finally, defeated, “Promise you won’t tell anyone?”

Opal’s gaze sharpens and three-fingered grip turns iron around the handle of her cup. “Child, if anyone is hurting you, they won’t live to see another day.”

“No no no,” Allister hurries to stammer, hands lifted placatingly in front of his chest, “‘s okay! Nobody’s doing anything.” His eyes have widened enough to glow an alarmed shade of lilac through his mask. “It’s just. Um…” Hesitantly, he lowers one hand onto the table and gestures to it with the other. “...watch.”

Allister’s hand rests over a spray of pink roses embroidered on the tablecloth. Then a translucent copy buds from it, fingers, palm, and finally wrist splitting away, swiveling to and fro above the table in demonstration. His forearm begins to separate as well, and his fully-opaque hand slides limply off the edge of the table to dangle as deadweight.

“Oops,” Allister mumbles, bowing his head as the translucent arm lowers to rejoin its double. The combined two stretch, flex their fingers, evidently recalibrating. “Still kinda hard to guess where everything goes when I’m not there…”

Opal takes another long sip of her tea. Fortunately, it’s still hot. “Dear. Are you a ghost?”

There’s a scuffing noise that she guesses is his feet shuffling on the carpet, as if he’s just been asked about an unflattering outfit. “Think so,” he says. “I can still make my body move, but only if I’m in it. ‘nd I don’t have to be in it, not all the time.”

“Effectively using it as a vessel,” Opal muses, grip relaxing. “I see. How does it fare without you?”

His weak shrug is the universal gesture for _bad_. “Not too ace. Gets...stiff, after a bit. Makes my eyes dry out.”

She decides better of wondering out loud about the logistics of decay in the presence or absence of un-life. “Do you suppose cold might help?”

The most enthusiastic he’s been this whole visit, Allister nods gratefully. “Bang on. I was thinking…” He shrinks into himself by a few degrees, back to worrying his sleeve. “Do you ‘spose you could help me find a freezer big enough?”

Well. Opal’s humored stranger requests.

* * *

He’s finally getting used to intangibility. It was tricky at first, and sometimes he still forgets he’ll fall through the tree trunks if he leans back (startled a family of Skwovet something awful that way, had to apologize), but at least it means the Wild Area isn’t so scary to venture into.

Even if management was unlikely to keep a gym leader, grade-schooler or not, to the train, he’d never had the guts for it when he was...more alive. A few times, he’d pack his bags, fasten on his pokeballs, and puff up his chest, as if telling himself _I’m ready_ , as if just thinking it hard enough, would make it come true. Then he would step under the arch to the Meeting Spot and the world would stretch for miles above him all around before crashing down square on his shoulders, and he’d have to retreat to safety, familiarity, while his nerves could still bear it.

Conveniently, now he has neither nerves nor guts with any say in the matter.

It’s a pretty place, it turns out. Views that would take his breath away if his lungs weren’t having a rest back at Opal’s. Unless you count accidentally possessing a sitrus berry with his hand, he hasn’t figured out how to pick things up yet, so none of his pokemon have been able to come along so far—long walk outside of a pokeball for anyone still a bit tangible—which is a shame, because they’d probably be well chuffed with it.

At least his Rotomphone can hover alongside him to take pictures. It has a good idea of where to take them from, too, and that helps make up for the fact that Allister’s fingertips will go right through the screen if he tries to adjust it himself. Had expected that he’d be able to touch it, Rotom being a ghost type and all, but it’d just told him, _Sorry pal, bit grounded like this._

He’s starting to get used to text-to-speech, too. “Um. ’m doing okay out here.”

“Little bit louder,” Rotom requests, hovering just above his lap to display the entry field of his texts with Opal filled out by _Umm day oh here_.

“I’m doing okay out here,” Allister enunciates, face burning both from the jitters of raising his voice and the thought of accidentally sending Opal gibberish.

Rotom buzzes triumphantly. “There you go! And send, right?”

“Send,” he confirms, voice slipping back to a comfortable mumble.

Across from the tangled tree roots that are his current resting place, there’s another tree, bark a jumble of textures to match the assortment of berry types ripening on its branches. He can pick out a few: pecha, hondew, wiki, coba…

Maybe, eventually, he’ll come here with his body proper. It would be nice to feel the sunshine and the grass—even the dirt on the seat of his trousers when he sits down. Hondew berries are his favorite, after all, and he’s heard fruit tastes different eaten right off the tree.

It’s an interesting feeling, to want to eat without being hungry. His stomach’s much too far away to ache, let alone rumble, but whatever’s replacing his eyes works just as well. Some part of him still sees berries hanging pendulously from their stems and thinks, _Those look nice._

On one visit, he’d seen a trainer camped out down the knoll, making curry. Hadn’t gotten close enough to see who, hadn’t wanted to like this, but the curry had made him so grateful that whatever’s replacing his nose works too. It would be so nice to eat some. It would be so nice to make some, to watch his pokemon milling about in pleasant anticipation like the trainer’s had been. He probably wouldn’t be good at it, but nobody is when they start out—

His Rotomphone beeps. Rotom itself also beeps. “Hey, new message!”

_I’m glad to hear,_ Opal has responded. _Raihan has courteously decided to arrive unannounced, so you may want to start back._

Allister blinks, running through the text again, then running through what he’s seen of Raihan’s general demeanor. Raihan’s flippant, ungovernable general demeanor. Yes, he very much might want to start back.

* * *

So maybe Raihan did show up unannounced—it’s not like Opal hasn’t made split-second decisions on only her own whims, too. Besides, she’s fun, and that’s part of it. Coolest eighty-eight-year-old he’s ever met, so it’s worth the trek through the Tangle.

He aims a lazy grin down at her once she opens the door. “Hey, granny.”

Opal, put-together as always in her candycane dress and voluminous boa, smiles beatifically back. “Well, hello, dear. What brings you here? I don’t suppose Leon’s made any fae additions to his team, has he?” She taps her umbrella against the doorstep, hands folded over its handle. “He seemed to be doing well enough against you without them.”

Raihan sucks a whistling breath through his teeth, then lets it out in a bark of a laugh. “Damn, you don’t pull your punches, do you? Y’know, if Nessa did that, I’d slug her in the arm.”

Opal’s smile doesn’t waver. “You’re welcome to try, dear.” She turns, starts back over the threshold as she swings the door open wider. “Do hurry inside. We wouldn’t want to let the Morelull in.”

From what he’s seen of her, he wouldn’t be surprised if there were already a few Morelull holed up in her pantry, or something. Tough old lady loves her fairy types and probably won’t let a few life-threatening spores stop her. Never one to back down from a challenge, he ducks under the doorframe and follows after.

There’s an odd energy to the whole open space of the interconnected parlor-kitchen-den. Shelves laden with cherubic porcelain figures of ribbon-collared Skitty, armchairs adorned with Shiinotic-print lace doilies...it feels like he’s stepped into an antique shop that only takes payment in half-forgotten childhood memories.

“One moment,” Opal says, pulling her phone from a nigh-invisible pocket of her dress that Melony would probably kill to have on one of her skirts. Then, at some point during Raihan’s mental note to tell said Snom-mom later, she vanishes.

Raihan stuffs his hands into his pockets, glances around the room. Considers sitting down.

The embroidered faces of several Shiinotic leer up at him. He decides against it.

Wandering into the kitchen it is, then. He knows for a fact that she keeps a jar of hard candies on the counter and for an educated guess that she won’t notice a few missing. 

He’s halfway across the faded linoleum tile when he notices out of the corner of his eye, on the far wall, a door that hadn’t been there his last visit.

Cocking his head, he pivots on his heel to face it. Might’ve been that he’s just never noticed it before, but—no, it has cleaner, sharper lines than everything else in the house. It’s new. It also, judging from the seal and latch, opens into a freezer.

One eyebrow quirks upwards. One corner of his lips does, too. While he may not have a clue why she might’ve had a freezer installed in secret, it would sure make today more interesting to find out.

He flips the latch up and ponders his options. Pokemon food in bulk? _Human_ food in bulk? Oh, Arceus, what if she picked up an Alolan Vulpix? Leon better not get his hands on it if she did, he does not need both ice and fairy—

The door swings open. There’s not much of anything in the freezer, it turns out. Just a small cot in the back with a pillow, some plain white sheets, and Allister laid out across it.

Raihan blinks. His face suddenly feels very, very cold.

“Hey,” he says.

Lying on his back, mask on, shoes on, Allister doesn’t move.

“Hey, Al,” Raihan says.

Chest motionless, limp fingers pale, Allister still doesn’t move.

Raihan steps closer, feels the air on his legs and the frigid floor through the soles of his shoes. “Oh, fuck,” he murmurs in a soft kind of horror.

He half-kneels beside the cot, weight balanced on the balls of his feet, hand hovering inches above Allister’s arm. It’s stick-thin and so, so small. All of him is. There’s no warmth left in him, no body heat radiating from his skin.

Something hollow yawns in the pit of Raihan’s stomach. It _would_ sure make today more interesting, huh?

He nearly chokes on a bitter laugh.

* * *

Today, Allister has learned that being a ghost drastically improves his running speed. There’s a distinct lack of weight to the sensation, no coil and spring off of solid ground, but he _sprints_ and his steps carry him farther, faster, than they ever did when he was corporeal. 

Wind doesn’t rush against his ears anymore, a startling clarity of sound in its stead. Noises rise and fall as the world whips past him in trees and streams and fields: rustling leaves, burbling water, the idle cries of foraging pokemon to each other. He could keep pace with the train this way, he realizes, as the brambles hemming Glimwood Tangle rake harmlessly through his shoulders. Given the distance spanning Ballonlea and the Wild Area, he probably has.

He slows to a trot once the first Chinchou lights the path ahead. It’s a delicate deceleration, not skidding on loam and leaf litter, not pitched forward by leftover momentum. By the time he’s within sight, he’s jogging at a moderately respectable speed for anyone of his age.

This is not for his own benefit, because the thoughts chewing anxious circles through Allister’s incorporeal head favor a pace that will take him back to his body before any crises can arise over it—which is to say, immediately.

Past the Pokemon Center, down the lane, around the Stadium to the living quarters nearby (he’s almost there, he’s almost back), and just for a shortcut he darts through the kitchen wall where it juts out in the little nook where Opal usually eats breakfast. He should be safe. His body should be in the freezer right across the room.

But he is not, because past the kitchen threshold, Raihan is bristling like a Drakloak missing its Dreepy. He doesn’t seem to see Allister, doesn’t even face him with how intensely his razor-eyed stare is focused in front of him on the landing of the stairs. 

More specifically: on Opal, who is standing at the landing of the stairs with a look in her eyes that makes the hair at the back of Allister’s phantom neck stand on end. It’s not a mean look, not a cold look, not even a cornered look—it’s a look that says _if you threaten me I will be ready_.

Raihan’s hands clench into sharp-knuckled fists. His lips press into a grim, tight line only broken by the point of one fang. His chest heaves, once, before his breathing returns to a steady tempo, and a bead of sweat rolls down from just below his headband.

Phantom or not, Allister’s stomach drops.

When Raihan speaks, his voice is a low rumble, warning and wariness twisted together. “I don’t know why you did it.” A pause, a tightening of the muscles already pulled taut in his legs. “Or what the _fuck_ Allister ever did to you.”

Allister flinches.

“But I’m not going to let you get away with it,” Raihan says, and his hand snaps toward the pokeballs at his hip, and Opal’s hand snaps towards the pokeballs at her hip, and Allister isn’t sure who’s going to get hurt but it’s going to be _bad_.

And he can’t, he can’t let anything happen to them, he has to do _something_ so he dashes forward with alarm bells in his ears and a wail on his lips. “No—!”

After all the way he stretches on the tips of his toes to reach it, his hand phases through the pokeball clasped between three of Raihan’s fingers. For a split second, he feels pitifully useless.

Then Raihan’s eyes dart down before flying wide open and he stumbles backwards, pokeball dropping gracelessly from the interrupted arc of his wrist. It hits the rug, opens, and releases Duraludon into the parlor.

Allister makes a choked noise of confused desperation. Raihan echoes it.

Duraludon swivels from Raihan to Opal to Allister and back again, looking about as bewildered as a being without a visible mouth can.

“Hey, uh,” Raihan rasps, “what the fu—”

“Not in front of the child, dear,” Opal cuts him off, replacing her own pokeball at her side, voice only slightly brittle.

* * *

Hot tea is a wonderful reintroduction to corporeality. The taste, the texture, the temperature—oh, the _temperature_. Though the connections between his mind and body are jury-rigged at best now, they carry the chill just fine, the numb heaviness that makes his fingers and lips ungainly, and they carry the reprieve from it even better. 

Allister lifts his teacup with two hands wrapped clumsily around its sides. It clacks on the very edge of his shifted-aside mask, and he does his best not to wilt at the view from one askew eyehole of Raihan peering at his mouth. He also does his best not to slurp his tea through cold, uncooperative lips.

He’s successful on one front. On the other, Opal takes her napkin and carefully dabs away the dribble of Earl Gray from the corner of his mouth.

“Didn’t know you had a beauty mark, little guy,” Raihan says, in the moment before Allister’s cheeks can muster the circulation for an embarrassed flush. “You got a, uh...ghost version?”

Nodding would disturb the tenuous balance of Allister’s current drinking poise, so he offers a quiet _mhm_ and slurps more of his tea. The warmth unfurls on his tongue and through his gut, the liquid sinks into him like rain into dry roots, and he feels that sudden borrowed burst of life that always accompanies him, if only for a little while, back into his body. In this instant as his cells spark with warmth, as his stomach growls, as the feeling returns to his extremities—in this instant he is _alive_.

“Cool,” Raihan says, fingers of one hand drumming on his thigh. The other swipes-taps-swipes at the screen of the Rotomphone he has promised will not be used for any form of documentation. “That’s cool. Yeah. This is all so f...” He trails off, glancing back at Allister. “Freakin’ weird.”

Hunkered beside the kitchen table, Duraludon lows its agreement. Allister takes a moment to appreciate the forethought Opal showed in vaulting her ceilings so high.

Opal plucks a scone from the burnished, tiered centerpiece of trays and proffers it to Duraludon, who does an excellent job of not taking her fingers with it. “Surely Galar’s foremost gym leader has heard of ghosts before.”

Raihan nabs two more scones one-handed from the centerpiece. “Heard, yeah.” He doesn’t proffer them to Duraludon so much as dropping them into its waiting mouth like rubbish into a bin, punctuating it with what is probably meant to be an affectionate pat but looks to Allister like a solid slap. Either way, Duraludon snorts happily. “Doesn’t mean I believed it. Thought ghosts were just pokemon and sh...stuff.”

Allister painstakingly lowers his teacup back into its saucer, then reaches for the centerpiece himself, the stretch sending pins and needles all up his arm. It may not be right off the tree, but fruit is bound to taste different baked into scones, too.

“That one is hondew, dear,” Opal says, gesturing towards a scone near the edge of the tray. She pats Allister’s shoulder once he snags the right one, turns back to Raihan. “Well, now you know. And now accusations shouldn’t waste any more of my time, correct?”

Raihan coughs. “Yeah.”

Allister nibbles the sugar-studded top of his scone and considers happy endings.


End file.
